ALT key permanently on; daughter to blame [solved]

parsim · Last edited by parsim on Mon Sep 04, 2006 8:38 am; edited 1 time in total

My 1-year old daughter just mashed the keyboard with her tiny fingers and now Gnome acts as if I have the ALT key permanently held down.

I have open the greatest Nethack game of my life and can't save it. Please help!!

Cuardin · Posted: Mon Sep 04, 2006 5:51 am Post subject:

Are you sure it isn't? Maybe she actually broke something. I assume you have rebooted the system and it still acts the same way?
_________________
Part of "The adopt an unanswered post initiative"

bombcar · Guru Joined: 08 Apr 2003 Posts: 453 Location: Wisconsin

Uh, nethack open? Reboot? I don't think that's the answer he wants.

You might be able to unplug the keyboard and plug another in, especially if you have USB keyboards.

yabbadabbadont · Posted: Mon Sep 04, 2006 6:42 am Post subject:

Cuardin · Posted: Mon Sep 04, 2006 6:57 am Post subject:

Sorry, I missunderstood the problem. My bad.
_________________
Part of "The adopt an unanswered post initiative"

parsim · Posted: Mon Sep 04, 2006 8:15 am Post subject:

Thank you for the replies. Unfortunately it's not the hardware. Swapping the keyboard for another makes no difference.

I swear, she finds the most incredible key combinations...

parsim · Posted: Mon Sep 04, 2006 8:27 am Post subject:

Ah. success! I used the mouse to copy and paste letters into the Nethack terminal to make it save and quit. Phew!

No idea what she did, but one login later, it's all working normally again.

Thanks for the help!

01mf02 · Posted: Mon Sep 04, 2006 2:04 pm Post subject:

Your daughter probably wanted you to stop playing Nethack all the time. :wink:

parsim · Posted: Mon Sep 04, 2006 8:13 pm Post subject:

I was only playing while she was asleep! It was just still open later, when we were writing an email to Mummy.

Who'd 'a thunk there was an "alt lock"!?

yabbadabbadont · Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 1:52 am Post subject:

I wonder if it is one of those "accessibility features"? I always disable them in whatever desktop environment I happen to be using.
_________________

parsim · Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 2:06 am Post subject:

Don't think so; I have all that disabled too.

During my frantic search for a solution, I did discover that Gnome has an "onscreen keyboard" as part of those accessibility features, which seemed perfect. Then I learned that after activating it, you need to restart Gnome for it to work.